The Environmental Activist in Contemporary U.S. and Canadian Novels

This thesis examines the representation of environmental activists in U.S. and Canadian novels from 1998-2020, surveying works written by authors including Margaret Atwood, T.C. Boyle, Octavia Butler, Michael Christie, Louise Erdrich, Jonathan Franzen, Barbara Kingsolver, Lydia Millet, Tommy Orange, Ruth Ozeki, Richard Powers, Kim Stanley Robinson, Tanya Tagaq, and Jeff VanderMeer. Despite a growing body of environmental literary criticism, also known as ecocriticism, portrayals of activists in the novel have received scant critical attention. Examining the portrayal of environmental activists in narrative fiction is crucial for a fuller understanding of how novelists address climate change and other environmental issues. Drawing on empirical, affective, and feminist ecocriticism, the thesis analyses depictions of fictional activists amid the increasing incidence of writers self-identifying their work as activism and asks which approaches to character support or undermine writers’ interest in motivating reader action on climate issues. One of the key representational challenges facing writers is the prevalence with which fictional activists are commonly depicted as fanatical, ineffective, or motivated by suspect causes, underscoring the anxiety and denial surrounding climate change in the Canadian and U.S. societies. The thesis traces the evolution of the archetypal literary environmental activist, descended from Edward Abbey, from something that can bluntly be described as negative to positive, simplistic to complex, impulsive to strategic. I read activists in several different contexts, with chapters devoted to gender and environmental justice, religion, biocentrism, Indigenous activism, and optimistic climate fiction. Throughout, the thesis considers the novel’s possibilities for effectively representing responses to climate change. Ultimately, I will argue that much in the way that activist representations in novels are influenced by the social and political climates in which they are created, these characterisations may in turn influence perceptions of and responses to the environment, climate change, and environmentalism beyond the page.

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